


A City of Dust

by Azzandra



Category: Ava's Demon
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Body Horror, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 05:32:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1457509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie fails her pact.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A City of Dust

“ _All the bridges we built were burned._  
 _Not a single lesson was learned._  
 _Everything that mattered is just_  
 _A city of dust_  
 _Covering both of us_.”

Shinedown – “[Through the Ghost](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNfYcPpgzgw)”

 

* * *

 

The tips of her fingers shake.

It isn’t so strange that Maggie worries about it at first, except in a distant, detached sort of fashion. So her fingers are shaking. It might be from nerves, stress, fatigue, who’s to know? She’s undergone all of those to some degree recently. Anger. It could be anger. (She’s good at anger.)

Her body has done strange things before, and she isn’t that frightened little girl anymore. She’s had her muscle and sinew turn to vines and bark, and she has felt the prickling growth of leaves from her fingers. The strangeness came with new strength once before.

So she ignores it.

 

* * *

 

Her skin itches. She can never find where it itches, though. She drags her nails up and down her arm, and over her shoulder, and twists to reach her back, no, the side of her torso, and she can’t catch the itch, she can’t, it keeps running away from her.

“What are you doing?” Ava asks, eyes narrowing.

“Nothing. Got an itch. Mind you own business,” Maggie snaps, but to make up for the harshness of her tone, she tucks a lock of hair behind Ava’s ear.

Ava scowls—not fiercely, just with a childish sort of indignation—and turns away again.

Maggie presses her nails hard into her shoulder, just under her T-shirt’s sleeve. The itch eludes her again, but no matter how hard she presses down, her nails don’t break the skin.

It is bark.

 

* * *

 

“Y-you’ve got a leaf,” Odin says, and plucks one right out of Maggie’s hair.

She feels a sting of pain in her scalp.

Odin frowns at the leaf and the single bead of red blood on its stem. He opens his mouth to say something.

Maggie smacks his hand hard. The leaf falls, gets picked up by the wind and carried away.

Odin gives Maggie a startled look.

Maggie gives him a glare right back, and they’re locked in that moment for the length of a whole heartbeat. She can see it in his eyes, as he weighs the strength of their new, tentative friendship and alliance, and as he comes to the end of that estimate, he looks away.

“S-sorry.”

_Good_ , she thinks at first.  _You should be_.

 

* * *

 

Her fingers sometimes stop shaking, if they’re not fingers anymore. There’s surety in the twisting vines. Flesh has betrayed her, but bark doesn’t balk.

She sits for hours one day, and she thinks she can  _feel_  it. She can feel the metallic tang of blood turn to the sweetness of sap in her veins. She can taste it, up and down her body, moving through her limbs.

The sound of footsteps startles her, and she reels in the green sprawl waiting to bloom outwards from her. Inch by agonizing inch, she recalls the wood back into her body. It goes slowly, painfully. But it goes.

 

* * *

 

Maggie presses a hand against her belly, against a door that she hasn’t been able to open since failing her pact.

“You’re a real monster, Maggie,” she hisses to herself. She scratches the nearest wall, nails screeching against the metal. “You’re a real monster,” she repeats. The nails leave behind deep furrows. “A monster of failure.” The words down dig in as deeply as her nails.

If she rips out the door, this wood invading her body, can she keep what’s left? Can she keep the hollowed out husk? Can she keep the meat and blood that was hers by right of birth?

 

* * *

 

She presses her forehead against the floor. It’s cold. For a few thankful moments, her universe is reduced to the patch of cold skin on her forehead.

“Maggie—”

Ava is in the doorway, haloed by light. Maggie can’t see the expression on her face, but it must be something like disgust. It must be something like regret. Because now Ava has to leave. You can’t be friends with a monster.

Maggie rises just enough to flail a tree trunk arm at Ava, and the girl squeals in surprise and retreats to the hallway.

The sooner everybody stops pretending, the sooner they can leave.

 

* * *

 

Maggie wonders if plants sleep.

She sits sprawled on the floor, looking up at the ceiling, and she watches motes of dust dance in the air. After a few long moments in which awareness throbs through her like waves of some strange fever, she thinks the motes might be pollen.

Maggie wonders if plants dream.

 

* * *

 

Ava has Maggie’s head on her lap, and she looks at Maggie upside down. Her hair keeps slipping over her shoulder and the ends of it tickle Maggie’s face.

“I’m not going to go through with my pact until Wrathia figures out some way to fix you,” she says.

“Dummy,” Maggie mutters. Her tongue is clumsy, and it comes in a dry whisper. “Then you’ll end up like me.”

“So we’ll both be in it together,” Ava says, with a single sure nod, as if it’s decided. “We can do anything together.”

 

* * *

 

Maggie decides that plants really can dream. Or at least they can hallucinate, because it surely can’t be the real Odin sitting on the floor, leaning against the far wall from her.

In this vivid dream, Odin looks up from his sketchbook.

“Y-you’re not allowed to give up,” he says. “N-not on your friends.”

“Good thing I don’t have any,” Maggie whispers. It gets lost across the distance.

“I d-don’t know what you j-just said, but you’re probably wrong,” Odin replies.

Maggie very deliberately closes her eyes. She keeps them closed for a very long time, and when she opens them again, Odin is gone.

There, that proves it. Just a hallucination.

 

* * *

 

“This isn’t how it ends,” someone says near her ear, so close Maggie can feel the faint brush of lips.

“Fuck you,” Maggie replies. It’s already ended.

“We’ll be so glad to have you back,” the voice continues, half laughing.

 

* * *

 

Once, just once, Maggie wakes up to a flower next to her head. It is pink, with thick petals. She recognizes it.

She exhales softly,  _oh_ , just a small breath of wonder.

Monsters don’t have friends. Monsters don’t have people who care—(love)—care about them.

But Magnolia Lacivi does.


End file.
